"The first False Issue one normally encounters is the claim that it has 'no real power'. One never quite knows what 'real' is intended to mean here, but the conventions of the False Issue lead one to guess that the word is doing duty for 'formal'. Thus is the red herring introduced. A moment later, the same speaker is telling another listener of all the good things that monarchy is a 'force' for. These good things invariably turn out to be connected to power. They are things like 'stability', 'unity', 'national cohesion', 'continuity' and other things for which powerless people would find it difficult to be a force. Edmund Wilson would have had little trouble noticing, furthermore, that all the above good things are keywords for conservative and establishment values."
React to this quote
More by Christopher Hitchens
See allResonant Thoughts
"If the present volume will help towards the comprehension of the fundamental principles on which the science of thermodynamics rests, and also serve to bring home the importance of a knowledge of thes…"
"One familiar Southern attitude is, "The Negro is our problem. We have to live with it, and let us solve it." Also Southerners say, "You can never understand it." Indeed, interference or advice from th…"
Explore Further
Related Quotes
"Science is unreasonably effective, it's generated knowledge beyond all expectation. It's also delivered per…"
— Brian Cox (physicist)"Professional philosophers are usually only apologists: that is, they are absorbed in defending some vested …"
— George Santayana"We must understand these are not Muslims, they are the son of the Magi and their hostility towards Muslims …"
— Abdul-Azeez ibn Abdullaah Aal ash-Shaikh"Sandra let her words fly on an arrow of certainty. "I know the whereabouts of a bona fide extra terrestrial."
— Vanna Bonta"I don’t know how they find things out so quickly, but haven’t you ever noticed how mercenary troops show up…"
— Margaret Ball"No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it tr…"
— Nelson Mandela
Related Thinkers
Related Topics
Deep Dives
- Friedrich Nietzsche on knowledge
- Baruch Spinoza on knowledge
- Thomas Carlyle on knowledge
- Aristotle on knowledge
- Immanuel Kant on knowledge
- Ludwig Wittgenstein on knowledge
- Michel de Montaigne on knowledge
- Epictetus on knowledge
- Friedrich Nietzsche on life
- Friedrich Nietzsche on truth
- justice & Beauty
- justice & Change
